Congratulations to David Yoon on editing and making The Asylum as educational, interesting, and enjoyable as any published work I have had the pleasure of reading. Congratulations to Maria Fanning on assuming The Asylum responsibilities for the future. I’m sure you will do fantastic. Thanks.

I have some comments on the post on Tom Elder, which I very much enjoyed reading. He was a crusty person. Perhaps much like Edward Cogan, about whom a token was struck that read, " A FOINE OULD BROOKLYN GITLEMAN OF A PEPPERY TURN OF MOIND, HE GITS HIS EBENAZUR UP AND THIN HE GOES IT BLOIND".

It is stated that he died a "sick and cynical old man". I am sure that it is hard to be happy and positive when your health is ebbing away, however he kept writing his monthly column "Recollections of an old collector" in Hobbies Magazine until the end of his life. I have the 1948 May and June issues of Hobbies in my library, and his column is in both of them. The June column is especially interesting. Also in that issue was the sad announcement of Mr Elder's death.

Regarding Pete Smith's observation on "Killing Spree" and the death of Steve Tanenbaum: Approx 2 years ago I too turned on the TV on a cable channel and immediately viewed Steve's image filling the screen in color. WTF? It was a cable show "The Killer Speaks" which is an episodic one hour show of closeup in-your-face interviews of imprisoned vicious killers.

In this case, it was Ukranian immigrant Maxim Gelman who killed four people, mostly using a knife, in a two day violent crime spree in Brooklyn and Manhattan. He was clearly insane (but not legally so) on the screen and showed no remorse. The kind of person you never want paroled. Steve Tanenbaum was the only Gelman victim to be killed "accidentally" as Gelman was fleeing an assault in a carjacked stolen vehicle and ran over him in a crosswalk in broad daylight as he was returning from his local bank.

While poking around the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs website for Coin World’s   This Day in History series I found this image of the Michigan Coin and Stamp Company.

Surely E-Sylum readers would love to see this, and probably know more about the company background.

I have a small string of ANA Convention bars consisting of the top bar with "ANA," followed by bars for the following ANA Conventions: 1949, 1950, 1951, 1954, 1955, 1956, 1957, 1958, 1959. If anyone has a use for these I'm happy to mail them to them at no charge. Although I have forty ANA convention bars on my own little 'string', my first convention doesn't go back this far.